Michael Williams - Before the Mask

Then he saw that the figure held up a mace, and he knew who it was, dancing alone in the eastern mountains. "Verminaard!" he spat. "May the Dark Seven devour you!"

Frightened, fascinated, Daeghrefn leaned out even farther, until the bailey seemed to spin below him. He strained beyond the torchlight into the chilling dark, and he watched as the shadow rose to cover the moon, to block out the light with its black, leathery wings…

Then he remembered the druidess's prophecy: This child will eclipse your own darkness.

And the moon was engulfed in Verminaard's shadow. Alone on the parapet, awash in the thin light of torches and candles, the Lord of Nidus shrank against the stone walls, his hands shaking. In the firelight, he cast no shadow, and it occurred to him that his shadow would not return, that he had no substance left to summon it.

I am becoming transparent, he thought, a wild laugh rising to his lips. Transparent, like madfall beetles in the cavern depths. He held up his hands, examining them closely. They were blue and cadaverous, blanching as he watched.

Daeghrefn staggered into his chambers, crying aloud as he jostled the mirror. He wheeled, tore the cloth from the glass, and glared at his own reflection.

His hair was straw-pale, and his eyes were light blue- the color of vacant skies.

"It is my pleasure to come at the bidding of the Lord of Nidus," Judyth began formally, and" the haunted eyes pivoted toward her. "And to offer him tonic and balm for his malady."

"Then Verminaard sent you? And you treat with him? For he is the Lord of Nidus. Or so they are all saying."

Judyth did not answer. Nervously she fingered the pendant at her throat.

Daeghrefn cleared his throat and rose painfully from his chair. He was hooded, and he shied away from the light as he spoke. Judyth felt as if she were talking to a wraith, to a walking dead man.

"You're with Verminaard often," Daeghrefn said. "You were there at his birth."

"Sir?" Judyth asked, immediately confused. But she answered cautiously, "I see him little of late."

That much was true. Twice she had seen Verminaard from the window of Aglaca's quarters as he paced over the battlements in the moonlight-a cloaked shadow gripping that black, infernal mace. He kept his distance now, Aglaca said-from the castle garrison, from the soldiers, from all his old companions-and Judyth had begun to wonder if the hew Lord of Nidus wasn't as mad as the old one who stood before her, muttering of fire and snow and conspiracy.

"Even so," Daeghrefn replied oddly, as though he had read her thoughts. He turned toward the fire and braced himself against the back of the chair, which creaked and teetered beneath him. "What does he want, druidess?" "1… I don't understand, sir. And my name is Judyth." "It's a simple question, really. What does Verminaard want?"

Judyth shifted uncomfortably on her stool. "I don't know, sir."

"Are you with him?"

"I beg your pardon?" Daeghrefn's questions were vague and needling. Judyth felt suddenly hot and itchy, as though she were dressed in wool under high summer sunlight.

"Are you part of the mutiny, damn it!"

He was much too loud. The voices in the hallway stopped abruptly, and Judyth imagined the soldiers who had escorted her to Daeghrefn's chambers now crouched at the door outside, listening as their commander further unraveled.

"No, sir. I would not conspire against you."

"So there is a conspiracy. I knew it! What have you heard, then?"

I must leave his presence, Judyth thought. I must get word to the west, regardless of soldiers and mages and dragons. Nidus is fast becoming a madhouse.

She started to stand, but Daeghrefn's menacing stare fixed her to her seat. He slipped into the shadows, crouching behind a statue of great Zivilyn, a spreading vallen-wood carved from veined marble.

"I have heard little, sir," Judyth replied uneasily. "Bits and snatches, but no more than that. Actually, I'm not certain. I have only just met him."

"You met him on a snowy night twenty years ago, in a cave south of here. Do not lie to me. And you said then, druidess, you said then, that his darkness would eclipse my own. Look upon your curse, woman!" He emerged from behind the marble tree, and he threw back his hood.

Judith quietly gazed upon the dark skin, though somewhat paler for his confinement in the tower, the dark hair, and the wild, dark eyes.

"Don't you see what he's done?" Daeghrefn insisted. "What you've done? I should have killed you both that night. Had it not been for Abelaard…"

Daeghrefn snorted and turned back toward the fire. Quietly, after a long, uncomfortable silence, Judyth rose.

"I shall be leaving now, sir. That is, if you have no more questions."

"You know much more than you are saying," the Lord of Nidus declared calmly, solemnly. "Do you remember how cold it was?"

" 'How cold', sir?"

"The night of his birth. In the mountains south of here. Before the fire."

Judith glanced nervously toward the door. Daeghrefn was shifting from time to time, place to place. For a brief, nightmarish moment, Judyth lost sight of him in the shadows. Then suddenly he was standing before the little chapel altar, a candle in his hand. His eyes gleamed brilliantly, like twin flames.

"Oh, I know who you are. This innocence and Lord Daeghrefn, sir serves you ill, druidess. I thought you were long dead, but, no, Robert failed me. He was worthless, and it is good that I left him on the plains. Though perhaps you fooled him as well. I know that your kind can change shape, altering like the seasons or like clouds in the summer sky, though I recognized you at once by the pendant around your neck."

"I still do not understand, sir." Judyth covered the purple stone at her throat.

"The old stories are right," Daeghrefn pronounced, turning to face the altar. "The druids do steal babies."

"Steal babies, sir?"

"They take the promised son, the second child whose birth you await with joy for seven long months, and in its stead they leave… a night-grown changeling." He laughed bitterly.

"I do not-"

"So you have said!" Daeghrefn roared. Then softly, almost wonderingly, he continued. "I saw him dancing last night in the eastern hills, where the little copse of evergreen… where, on the night of the fire…"

He fell silent. Judyth cleared her throat and waited for words that did not come as a minute passed, then another. Finally she backed from the room, leaving the Lord of Nidus staring into the fire.

As he looked at the flickering flames, Daeghrefn remembered another fire, another burning. Suddenly, as though the Abyss had opened to receive him, his thoughts were consumed again with a vision of dark, spreading wings.

Two figures walked the walls of Castle Nidus that night.

On the southwest corner of the battlements, Aglaca kept a lonely vigil, watching the walls, the towers, and the bailey for a sign of his old companion. He had slipped his guards by the stables, but it was nothing new. A lazy pair, they would no doubt wait for him to return, knowing he was going nowhere without Judyth, without all his belongings, left in the room he had stayed in since he was twelve years old.

Resting for a moment against the stone crenelations, the Solamnic youth gazed toward Eira Goch, veiled in a deep western darkness, and smiled as he remembered how he had pointed out the pass to Verminaard from their bedroom window ten years ago, on the night after the gebo-naud.

Verminaard had known the name of the place and its history, but he could not locate it in the dark. Aglaca had given Verminaard the dagger then, and though the little weapon lay polished and well kept in the room upstairs, the promise of their friendship had suffered far worse over the years.

It seemed somehow fitting. Fitting and circular. Aglaca would have to find the pass for Verminaard again- another kind of pass, through another kind of darkness.